


new and sharp and with many teeth

by winterbones



Category: The White Queen (TV)
Genre: F/M, PWP, the duke and duchess of gloucester bang on every surface available at middleham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 02:06:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbones/pseuds/winterbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne Neville is not certain a proper Duchess of Gloucester would spend so many hours imaging her husband in varying degrees of unclothed, but that doesn't seem to stop her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	new and sharp and with many teeth

It was natural for a woman to come into her marriage a novice of passion—in fact, most ladies of standing were taught that a woman shouldn’t feel passion at all. Anne certainly hadn’t felt any carnal delight in her first marriage. After their first brutal night, Edward of Lancaster had quit Anne’s bed and she could not claim that she had mourned his absence. At first, she had thought it might have been some deficiency in her. Her mother had never told her what to do, what to expect, as she had Isabel—Anne possessed enough love for her mother yet to think that the Countess Warwick had planned to reveal the secrets of the marriage bed, if their lives had run their intended course.

It wasn’t until Richard that those worries about her own lack of desirability had been assuaged. She did not image she would ever truly be able to discuss her brief but all too long marriage to Edward of Lancaster, with anyone, and she was simply content to place her memories of him in a box and store it away forever. Richard did not press, though she thought he wanted to know

“He was cruel,” was the only statement Richard had been able to wheedle from his young bride, “and now he is dead.”

Richard’s eyes had hooded, but he had given a shallow nod and allowed the matter to rest. Anne would let him formulate his own thoughts; she did not image they would be far from the mark.

She had been a girl when she’d been sent to Edward of Lancaster’s bed, and Edward of Lancaster had been a monster. Now Anne had been initiated into the mysteries of womanhood, and her husband was a man, a kind and loving man if a solemn one.

It surprised Anne how well she had taken to it. Just because Edward of Lancaster was a monster, didn’t mean she wasn’t passionless and she had worried that she would be, but she had taken an open and frank pleasure in her wedding night, in Richard’s hands exploring the supple contours of her body, of having his dark, intense eyes feast on her revealed flesh. She had not laid there and prayed for its ending, the way she had before. She had been an active participant, a dancer in a steps that felt as old as time. Richard’s decision that she should be top had shocked her, and made her shyness double, but she’d taken to that too, the feeling of him beneath her, clasped between her thighs.

Even now, sitting demurely beside the window, working on her failing embroidery, Anne felt her cheeks flush—with pleasure, not embarrassment. She felt a scalding heat along the insides of her thighs, and recognized it as a desire, lust. As uneducated as she had been on her wifely duties at the time of her marriage, Anne knew that ladies were certainly not supposed to take any real pleasure in the act, enduring their husband’s attentions only to beget sons and heirs. That was a Holy mandate.

The fact that she did enjoy martial rights with Richard, that looking covertly as he poured over tenant complaints made her cheeks grow hot made her remember what his bare chest had looked like in the firelight, how strong it had been beneath her palms, how he had gasped into her mouth with pleasure, fingers digging into her hips—all made Anna wonder if she was somehow wanton, like those loose women that King Edward kept close at hand. No one thought very highly of them, sneering beneath their sleeves when the king could not see. Surely if word got out that the Duchess of Gloucester, during her own mediations at Chapel, was suddenly struck with the desire to return to her husband’s bed and feel his mouth on her breast, it would reflect very poorly on her Duke.

What would _Richard_ think?

“Anne,” her husband’s voice was a rich baritone, and caused a pleasure of shiver to roll down her spine. His eyes were fastened on Anne as she turned away from the window, an unnerving, glint in them. “Where have you wandered off to?”

“Nowhere in particular,” Anne lied, biting down on her tongue when her guilt stung her. She could hardly admit to her husband she was thinking about him in all manner of disrobed.

Just as she was no longer a girl, he was no longer a boy and she could read his countenance the way she once had, knowing what each furrow and divot of brow meant. His “funny eyes”—as Isabel had laughingly referred to them as—had been to her an open text, one that only she had the deciphering key to. Anne had once treasured the secret knowledge, had hoarded it greedily. Now there were curvatures to his lips she was unfamiliar with, flashes of shadows in his eyes that she could not remember seeing before. In ways, he was a stranger to her, and in the current between them there was a sensation of testing boundaries. It helped to think that perhaps he was unsure as she was in all of this, beneath her veneer of cool, royal confidence.

Anne wasn’t aware he had approached her until she heard the clatter of his boots, and she glanced up at him quick enough to make her neck creak in protest. This far north, it never grew overly warm but in the high summer the heat was cloying enough for Richard to forego his doublet in his private chambers. Anne found her eyes brought down to the v of exposed flesh at his collar, before shyly tipping her gaze away.

“It must be diverting,” he observed and she felt the crawl of a flush as his fingers smoothed out a furrow in her brow. “You can tell me, you know. Whatever you like.”

“You would pry into the mystery of a woman’s mind?” It was easy to tease when she thought of him as the boy from Middleham, quieter than his peers, content to while his time in the shadows, a solemn observer of the world around him.

“Pry? Oh, no, but since I have nothing but the deepest respect and admiration for your clever mind, I wouldn’t mind a peek into its inner workings now again.”

A tremulous smile touched Anne’s lips as she set aside her ruined needlework, more out of desire to disguise the flash of pleasure that coursed through her. It was always George and Edward that were commended for their charm and witticism, but she always had, and always would, favor Richard’s softly uttered endearments—they were only spoken with absolute sincerity.

“I wouldn’t want you to think ill of me,” she admitted

“I couldn’t possibly, Anne.” Something close to alarm laced through his words as he crouched down beside her, those intense, blue eyes fastened onto her mien, ferretting out every secret she might have sought to squirrel away.

It was wrong to worry him, but Anne still felt a reluctance at admitting it. What would he think of her, if he knew how often her thoughts turned to unpure things, how often her thoughts drifted to daydreams of peeling him out of his tunic and doublet, to the heated embrace of their wedding night?

“Anne.” His strong, wide palms cupped her cheeks as he leaned up on his hunches, forehead pressing into hers. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Anne protested, mortification sending her cheeks into a riot of color. She could feel the heady burn of them, and the crawl of it down her neck. “Really, Richard. I just—I’m not being a very good wife, I’m afraid. Other women would _never_ allow their thoughts wander like I allow mine.”

“Wander?” That shrewd look glinted in Richard’s eyes, the one that Anne knew meant he was rapidly processing the information. Anne half-wished he would deduce it himself, but she imagined the Duke of Gloucester would not think his wife so improper in her thoughts. “Now you have my curiosity. Tell me.”

Her hands lifted and pressed to her face in clear embarrassment. “Richard,” she moaned, “please don’t make fun of me.”

He laughed, and though it shouldn’t, it helped relaxed her. He sounded like the boy she had known in her youth. Anne jolted when she felt his lips brush over the fingertips that covered her eyes. “Make fun of you? Never, but know I don’t think I can walk away without knowing where the intrepid little mind has _wandered_ to.”

“Oh, to you, of course,” she managed to squeak out, words muffled by the cup of her hands. “I spend far too much time thinking about—well, _you know_.”

Another laugh, though this one had dropped an octave, growing huskier enough to elicit another shiver down her spine. “Do I? Let’s see.” Another quick kiss to the back of Anne’s hand, trying to coax them away from her face. “Perhaps you find your mind wandering to how your wife’s hair looks, sunlight streaming in it, or remember how lovely it looks throw about your pillow, perhaps you image kissing your way up from her heel to her head and back down again. Perhaps you spend your day imaging what it would be like convincing her to spend an afternoon lazing about the furs when you _should_ be composing a correspondence with your brother the king. Or—perhaps that is just me.”

“O—oh.” Her hands dropped away, eyes wide and guileless blue. “Rich—Richard. Those are certainly not thoughts a man should have for his lady wife.”

She jumped when he reared up and pressed a shockingly hunger kiss for her parted lips, eyes lowered to half-mast. “Perhaps not, but I would rather be passionate for my wife than coolly indifferent.”

Her girlhood lessons about the state of marriage and its purpose warred with her own rebellious body and needs, her fingers slipping up to worry the pointed angle of Richard’s shirt collar. “And I as well.”

He knelt again, and Anne unconscious widened her legs to allow him room between them. She flushed when Richard laid his palms on her knees, the smile that curved the corner of his mouth Anne decided was more _dangerous_ than anything else. “And you, my lady wife?”

She wet her lips, feel a kind of triumph in the way his eyes seemed to be riveted to the movement. “Yes,” she admitted quietly. “I’ve turned into a terrible wanton.”

“As a good husband, I will keep your secret,” Richard assured her, and his fingers stroked a path up the outside of her thigh. Even though the yards of wool, Anne could feel the heat of his palm, scorching her flesh.

“Richard.” It was far too much. Anne’s fingers grappled for his shoulders, slipping along the one side where the serpentine curvature of his spine made them uneven, and tugged him toward her. “Take me to bed.”

“No.” When she drew back in surprise, Richard followed her, pulling a gasp from her as his mouth coasted along the ridges of her throat. “Here.”

Incomprehension made her blink as she attempted to dissect his words— _here? How_ —and then her husband was scooping her up, carrying her across the width of his private office. The desk in the center had been the Neville family for generation, and it had given her a particular thrill to see Richard there, pouring over his reports. A sweep of his hand sent them scattering to the floor with a flutter, and she was settled in their place.

“Weren’t those important?”

Richard sent them a disinterested look. “Probably.”

She might have said more, but her husband’s fingers were tugging her gown down over her kirtle. “ _Oh_. I didn’t know you could—the sun’s out.”

“So it is.” Another disinterested look, this time toward the window. “You could do this whenever you please, you know.”

Her eyes went wide at the implications.

“I’ve scandalized you. I’m sorry.” Richard’s mouth kicked up at one corner, and Anne feel the bloom of pride to think she was the only to put that particular look on her husband’s face.

“I don’t think I mind.”

She hadn’t noticed he’d been working her free of her sleeves until she felt the air caressing her naked flesh. She made a strangled sound at the back of her throat, but Richard was relentless, tugging at laces until the gown had enough slack to ease over her breasts. She shivered, though not with shame but something hot and unnamable, as his eyes moved across her chest. A cry escaped her when he lowered his hand, tongue sliding down the valley between her breasts.

“ _Richard!_ ” She clawed at his sides, knees lifting instinctively. Richard used that to his advantage, easing the voluminous folds of her skirt and her chemise over her knees. Anne’s small arm length only allowed for her to peel his tunic up his neck, and then over his head when he lifted his head away from her chest. Almost immediately he returned to mouthing her breast, bringing one into the hot, wet cave of his mouth, easing one knee up onto the desk. Anne hooked an ankle around the calf, eyes were fluttering rapidly at the sensations.

In the dark of their rooms, with only dim candles as light, lovemaking with her husband had felt more dreamlike anything, hazy around its edges, something conjured up from the youth she had spent pining for Richard of York mingled with the intimate knowledge of marital relations she had gained in adulthood.

Here, sunlight flashed harshly across Richard’s hair head, and she could see the film of dust that danced in the slit. Everything here was proportional, real, and her belly burned with gnawing need.

She shoved at his shoulders, but only because she wanted to divest him of breeches. Richard, at least, seemed to understand that and reared back on his knees, hastily tugging at his laces. Anne’s hand traced the smooth expanse of his chest she now had access to, leveling herself up on her elbows and dragging her mouth across the warm flesh, emboldened enough to drag her tongue across his nipple. Richard gasped, fingers tangling in the hair that had escaped from its braided confine at the back of her neck, and dragged her mouth back up to his, diving into her mouth as his fingers palmed a breast. Anne’s hips canted against his, instinctively, her smooth thigh sliding against the wiry, dark hairs on his legs.

One of Anne’s hand had found a perch at the top of Richard’s chest and he caught it around its wrist, dragging it down the planes of his chest, and down farther, to where his manhood protruded now free of its breeches. Anne would have yanked her hand back in sudden shyness, but Richard guided her fingers to curl around the harden flesh. She flushed, lashes fluttered over her eyes, as her fingers were directed down the length of his shaft. The sounds he made her at tentative touches encouraged Anne, so when he removed his hand from her wrist she was confident enough to continue her slow, measured strokes.

“Anne.” Her husband’s voice was strangled, acutely pained, and Anne tipped a wide, brimming smile to his dark, tense face. “Anne, I have to—”

“Yes,” Anne whispered.

Her back hit the desk hard enough to send it scrapping across the floor, but Anne could only feel the pump of liquid heat in her stomach. She cried out in shock against Richard’s shoulder as his fingers slipped between her legs, stroking the apex of her thighs until she drenched and trembling. His mouth moved hungrily over her neck, and the underside of her jaw, back to her mouth.

“Anne,” her husband growled against her mouth, sucking hard on her bottom lip. “Anne.” Her hips rocked forward to cradle him, and then he slid into her with only little resistance. The pinching discomfort she had felt at their first coupling, her body still so unused to a man’s intrusion, was practically nonexistent, and quickly forgotten at the sensation of being stretched and filled.

Her nailed scoured down his back as he rocked in her, forehead buried in her shoulder, and when he moved it sent lightning bolts of pleasure skidding up her spine. She could feel her body tightening, coiling, readying to propel her into the ocean of pleasure she hadn’t know existed for her to swim in when she had been married to Edward of Lancaster. She hadn’t known a man could, or would, do anything other than take his pleasure of a woman and leave. But her husband was determined that she have her share, and this time there was no need to coax it out. It was there and loud and hungry at her throat, clawing its way free in a mangled scream.

Richard’s hips bruised into hers, sent Anne sliding along the desk as she clung to him, arms secured around his shoulders, legs around his hips. He groaned and slumped over her, shaking with the spasms of his pleasure. Anne lay gulping like a fish beneath him, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

She was dragged back down into her body when Richard’s dexterous fingers slipped between their bodies, stroking her where they were still joined, where her flesh was ultrasensitive and raw, to that little bundle at the hood of her sex that burned with agonized pleasure. Anne was already primed for it, and it took little cajoling from his fingers to ease her into a crying release, arching beneath him as the wave of pleasure rocked over her.

They laid there, the sweat of their excursion fusing there skin together, and Anne amused herself by drawing absent patterns along his side. Richard chortled when he felt it, and rolled away from her to save himself from the tickling.

“Perhaps I do not want to be a good wife,” she observed quietly, “because being a bad one is far more pleasurable.”

“Wicked,” Richard teased, and his mouth moved over her sweat-slick shoulder. “How lucky you are that I find myself pleased to have such a wicked wife.”

 _He loves me, just as I am_ , Anne thought, and turned into his side.

“Hmm.” Richard looped one arm around her shoulders, and leaned half off the desk to pluck a slip of parchment from the floor. “Well, that _was_ very important, after all.” With a laugh, he let it flutter back to the floor.


End file.
